Post by beenatural101 on Jun 8, 2010 18:47:30 GMT -6
Really just an addendum to my earlier oops thread, but it sounded good, so I went with it. Everybody knows there is an element of danger when messing with something that could kill you. That is what makes it dangerous and that is why so many people do so many stupid things for the thrill. Well, bees are not like that for me, I am sure they are for some folks, the adrenaline rush of the excitement oh my! If I was in this for excitement I would move to Florida and catch Africanized bees, cut em out of houses, stuff like that, rescue little doggies and "rehabilitate bees" ie re queening and killing off the grumpy strain right there as soon as you see the mean bitch.Well, really I would love it, but my wife doesn't want to go, so I will stay here with her, and wait on them. They aren't that far really.
Now, sure, sticking your hands into a living organism (supercreature) consisting of thousands of things that can inject you with poison does have a certain element of danger. Knowledge is the key here, you really do have to know what you are doing. Still, things go wrong and you get stung up. Common threshold for surviving a "bee attack" with no meds is between 200 and 1200 stings they think. Some people can go into anaphylactic shock over one in a minute or less, so who really knows. Good news is you either become immune or eventually go into anaphylaxis, but anyway... So knowledge is key right? Well, unfortunately with honey bees the best way to learn is probably from your own mistakes. Sure, you can read a lot and ask a lot of questions but all that matters not a bit when you just dropped a frame of bees on a hot dry day. Nothing can make you remember that lesson like doing it. You tend to forget all that book learning and react, then you find out that if dropping them was bad, your reaction was worse. Worse yet, you have your "divide" all done and everything is good for 2 weeks, when one sunny afternoon you decide to take a look at it and see more bees coming and going from that hive than you know could possibly exist in there. The robbers of summer are here! What do you do? oh the books tell you throw a wet sheet over it and the bees will sort it out. Yep, last fall, I had me a little robbing frenzy and did this. Well don't you know that night it frosted in sept? HERE? Killed every forager I had out of the hive at 2:00 pm that day, they were stuck to the sheet when I got home that night at 200 am. Well there went my hive, they were so large at one point they almost starved, bunch of bees with nothing coming in eat bunches of honey faster than I thought for sure. So they were in poor shape at the onset of this robbing incident anyway. The first robbing incident was much more exciting, me out there looking for a queen I have 40 bucks in incl shipping in surrounded by this swirling mass of bees, watching them go through the comb like buzz saws. Robbers pretty much destroy everything fast, like before your eyes fast. They say use smoke, well... mine must not have been strong enough cause it didn't seem to faze em. Face it honeybees rob each other if there is nothing else to do.
Why?
They are bugs, I know I keep coming back to this, but they have no respect. It is a tough world, and if this hive is strong enough to demolish this one and bring home the bacon when there is no pork to be found, well.... Hate to sound all Darwinian about it. Life is hard out there, its life or death.
Bees will be bees. Try to understand them if you got em, instead of using them. Try to learn from other folk's mistakes. I personally had not moved my split very far, and most of the bees I put in there went home. I think they came back later too. My new queen and her handful of loyal bees just couldn't compete. The big hive? Well, maybe I split my bees too thin, but it was huge and had started from a little thing, I was making light splits last year, gotta spread the bees. Then there was just lots of bees at the wrong time, and they did not have enough to weather the dearth like my smaller hives with much less food did. Maybe I had the wrong bees, well, don't have em now.
Think now I might have the right ones, other than birds eating my queen on a mating flight (I guess that's what happened to her, maybe it was that fat lizard I been watching) my bees are doing just fine. If i have to feed em in aug, I guess I have to, but I made sure to leave them plenty while they wait for the goldenrod. Lucky girls get to eat sparkleberry honey all summer long...
Now, sure, sticking your hands into a living organism (supercreature) consisting of thousands of things that can inject you with poison does have a certain element of danger. Knowledge is the key here, you really do have to know what you are doing. Still, things go wrong and you get stung up. Common threshold for surviving a "bee attack" with no meds is between 200 and 1200 stings they think. Some people can go into anaphylactic shock over one in a minute or less, so who really knows. Good news is you either become immune or eventually go into anaphylaxis, but anyway... So knowledge is key right? Well, unfortunately with honey bees the best way to learn is probably from your own mistakes. Sure, you can read a lot and ask a lot of questions but all that matters not a bit when you just dropped a frame of bees on a hot dry day. Nothing can make you remember that lesson like doing it. You tend to forget all that book learning and react, then you find out that if dropping them was bad, your reaction was worse. Worse yet, you have your "divide" all done and everything is good for 2 weeks, when one sunny afternoon you decide to take a look at it and see more bees coming and going from that hive than you know could possibly exist in there. The robbers of summer are here! What do you do? oh the books tell you throw a wet sheet over it and the bees will sort it out. Yep, last fall, I had me a little robbing frenzy and did this. Well don't you know that night it frosted in sept? HERE? Killed every forager I had out of the hive at 2:00 pm that day, they were stuck to the sheet when I got home that night at 200 am. Well there went my hive, they were so large at one point they almost starved, bunch of bees with nothing coming in eat bunches of honey faster than I thought for sure. So they were in poor shape at the onset of this robbing incident anyway. The first robbing incident was much more exciting, me out there looking for a queen I have 40 bucks in incl shipping in surrounded by this swirling mass of bees, watching them go through the comb like buzz saws. Robbers pretty much destroy everything fast, like before your eyes fast. They say use smoke, well... mine must not have been strong enough cause it didn't seem to faze em. Face it honeybees rob each other if there is nothing else to do.
Why?
They are bugs, I know I keep coming back to this, but they have no respect. It is a tough world, and if this hive is strong enough to demolish this one and bring home the bacon when there is no pork to be found, well.... Hate to sound all Darwinian about it. Life is hard out there, its life or death.
Bees will be bees. Try to understand them if you got em, instead of using them. Try to learn from other folk's mistakes. I personally had not moved my split very far, and most of the bees I put in there went home. I think they came back later too. My new queen and her handful of loyal bees just couldn't compete. The big hive? Well, maybe I split my bees too thin, but it was huge and had started from a little thing, I was making light splits last year, gotta spread the bees. Then there was just lots of bees at the wrong time, and they did not have enough to weather the dearth like my smaller hives with much less food did. Maybe I had the wrong bees, well, don't have em now.
Think now I might have the right ones, other than birds eating my queen on a mating flight (I guess that's what happened to her, maybe it was that fat lizard I been watching) my bees are doing just fine. If i have to feed em in aug, I guess I have to, but I made sure to leave them plenty while they wait for the goldenrod. Lucky girls get to eat sparkleberry honey all summer long...